


The Witch's Familiar - Series Nine - Episode Two (Meta/Review)

by Boji



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Review, Gen, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:08:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4924315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Episode written by Steven Moffat.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Witch's Familiar - Series Nine - Episode Two (Meta/Review)

**Author's Note:**

> Episode written by Steven Moffat.

On first view I was disappointed. On a re-review far less so, but I'm still in two minds as to whether this episode actually works as a two-parter (with last week's _"The Magician's Apprentice"_ ) for all that the entire plot-arc is booked ended by a little boy's plaintive cry for help as he stands stranded on a battlefield, amid the hand-mines.

_"Davros made the Daleks but who made Davros?"_

 

The unasked question, which sits firmly at the centre of this episode, is: "Who made the Doctor?" Davros asks him _why_ he ran from Gallifrey and what secret his confession dial holds. Both those questions mirror the Doctor's own pondering about Davros, Steven Moffat implying Davros is a dark twisted mirror of the Doctor's own self. 

And Missy? 

Dancing her way across the Skaro sands she stands as dark-companion, if you will, mirroring Clara as much as the Doctor himself - Time-Lord/Time-Lady 2.0. But, for all that she tries to sacrifice Clara and worse - in a move akin to Davros trying to get the Doctor to believe he could and indeed _might_ commit genocide, ending the Dalek race - tries to manoeuvre the Doctor into killing his friend - she saves the Doctor. Missy risks her own life to save the Doctor (and I assume the universe) and, once she realises the Doctor's own regeneration energy is being siphoned off and leached by Davros, it's Missy who picks up a gun and saves the day.

The Master may have long thought of the Doctor has his enemy, but they've sided against a common foe before and Missy (i.e. Steven Moffat) blatantly tells the audience that the TimeLord's raison d'être is to kill the Dalek race. 

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. 

In this episode traps are layered within traps. The episode opens with Clara hanging upside down, feet tied by a rope, Missy watching over her as she sharpens a large pointy stick. It's an image which calls to mind the major arcana tarot card: _The hanged man_ described on Wikipedia:

__

"[…(2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death...] "


__

Is Clara's life in suspension, running with the Doctor? It can be said, given that her earth-bound, regular life died with Danny Pink. But as she hangs about and considers life - and the Doctor - from a new perspective, as Missy tells tall tales of the Doctor's earlier adventures, of teleport devices (in this the age of the Apple watch) and of vampire monkeys, it's also impossible not to recall Toby Withouse's ["A Town Called Mercy"](http://boji.dreamwidth.org/371582.html#cutid1). Just as the Gunslinger wanted revenge on Jex for creating him, here Moffat implies that Davros wants revenge on the Doctor, wants to destroy what makes the Doctor _who_ he is ( _"a bloke in a box telling stories"_ , this regeneration's description, for all that I far prefer Eleven's _"Mad-man in a box"_ ) for having been at the _"gates of his beginning."_ Of course, the choice of setting and location i.e. Skaro's desert landscape, also aids in calling to mind Whithouse's earlier episode (with Eleven and his fabulous Pond's) with its homage to Wild West movie tropes. 

As far as homages go, this episode both nods back to the _Who_ Classic era (Four, wild curls under a wide-brimmed hat, running across frame, plus overt reference to _Genesis of the Daleks_ ) and tips its hat to Joss Whedon's _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._ Pointy sticks, anyone? However she waves it aloft, Missy is wielding a stake not a wand. And her characterisation increasingly calls to mind Juliett Landau's portrayal of Druscilla, not simply because of her use of the word 'Poppet'. Missy is ever so slightly unhinged and yet utterly loyal to the Doctor, like Druscilla and her Spike. Or, in terms of heroes versus villains, her Angel. And then, of course, we have monster remnant Daleks rising from beneath the rebuilt city of Skaro. [_"From beneath you, it devours"_](http://www.buffyguide.com/episodes/beneath.shtml) \- literally. Missy may push Clara down an alien rabbit hole into the sewers of Skaro - which have more than a little uncommon with [Parisian catacombs](http://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en/catacombs/more-2000-years-history) \- but what rises up from those sewer-graveyards at the end of the episode is akin to and kin to ["the first evil"](http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/The_First_Evil).

Overtly, this episode is a game of traps and evasions. The Doctor trapped by killer androids, with seconds to live, before miraculously managing to teleport. Clara, handcuffed to a Dalek security device - Missy ringing the Dalek's basement-sewer doorbell - then running towards, not away. The Doctor being inveigled to jeopardise his life (and life-force) by Davros. Clara trapped within the shell of a Dalek, her life imperilled, as she faces her best friend who sees before him his most ruthless enemy. The episode ends with the Doctor triumphant, each trap within a trap foiled: the Doctor in the TARDIS with Clara Oswald, ready to start on the run of adventures which will make up the rest of Series Nine.

Mind you, there's a huge suspension of disbelief called for fairly early on, upon which an entire plot thread hangs. You have to leave aside the fact that Missy's broach, burning holes in the Dalek armour, actually explodes a living Dalek, and yet doesn't leave its armoured carapace in pieces. Clara would have been unable to climb into the Dalek-shell, which should have been full of Dalek bio-material from the body of a dead Dalek anyway! Trapped within the exterior-body of a Dalek, Clara's identity supressed into that of a Dalek, Moffat gives a direct nod back to the audience's first meeting with Clara Oswin Oswald: "soufflé girl."

That echo of Clara only existed within the confines of her own imagined cockpit, and mind, for there was a biological Dalek within that tank-shell. Soufflé girl (mark 1.0, if you will) didn't survive. Here she does, rescued by the Doctor who wipes away her tears, finally seeing clearly that his friend is before him caught in a trap of Missy's making.

Clara: _"Did you see me?"_  
Doctor: _"When do I not see you?"_

If Missy has been all about baiting the Doctor's hook with his _Impossible girl_ , Davros has been all about baiting the Doctor's hook through much the same deus ex machina, or non-linear time in the machine. As regards, Clara, Missy, and the Doctor what Steven Moffat presents us with _only_ works (as a reading) if you posit Missy was working backwards along the timey-wimey timeline of the Doctor's life all along, i.e. if Missy first saw Clara cast across time and space (her echo like a leaf buffeted in the wind) and then acted to catalyse her meeting with the Doctor, handing Clara the phone number of _the_ most unique I.T. specialist in the multiverse. As an aside (for viewers of a certain age) Missy quipping that _"the bitch is back"_ calls to mind a certain Joan Collins, as Alexis Carrington, and a [cat fight in a garden pond](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfVYaK7VFOY) over a man or his millions. Amusingly, this quip makes Missy the ex-wife. And the broach, given to her on the event of her daughter's wedding? Could it be a gift from the Doctor on the event of their child's wedding? The mind boggles. 

In contrast to Missy's desperate ploy to rid the Doctor of Clara, Davros' trap is a more cunning one, nodding to _Harry Potter_ (in that Voldemort needed the blood of his/the enemy to be rejuvenated or resurrected) but also to _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ in the overt references to vampirism. The twist in Moffat's tale pre-supposes the Doctor guessed Davros's evil plan - and went along with it anyway. Even on re-watch, I find it hard to believe the Doctor would see Davros' plot, and go along with it anyway. I also find it hard to believe so much regeneration energy, siphoned out in such a manner, wouldn't kill him and yet would in fact awaken the aged, decaying, Daleks. Zombie Daleks devouring their own brethren. Colony Sarff's coils, and the Doctor aglow with regeneration energy, i.e. as phoenix are a direct reference to the _ouroboros_ \- the mythological symbol of immortality described on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros) so:

_The ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality,[3] especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end._ 


Or, to paraphrase Missy: _"It doesn't matter which face he was wearing; it's all the Doctor to me. "_

It has to be said that _The Witch's Familiar_ stands on its own merit - most of all - due the the fantastic acting in the scenes between Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach. The Doctor and Davros respectively. 

Old _frenemies_ now at the supposed gates of Davros' ending, meeting as equals, armed with little but the weaponry of words and cunning. The scenes give an insight into both men: One who would partly turn himself into a machine to survive and save his race; the other seeing compassion as a central tenant of what makes him he man he is. The scene in the dilapidated hospital suite, which is Davros' prison as much as the heart of the trap he is hoping to spring, is played almost in the round; the camera seeming to revolve around the two actors. It is a study in brilliance, acting-wise. From Beach's speech celebrating the salvation of his timeless enemy, the Time Lords, exulting the fact that a man should have a people

_"A man should have a race, people an allegiance…][…If you have redeemed the time lords from the fire, do not lose them again. Protect your own, as I sought to protect mine"_ 


to the Doctor admitting that he isn't a very good doctor, line delivery and acting are a joy to watch. Steven Moffat is, of course, writing dialogue to play the audience like a fiddle in scenes where Davros talks of wanting to see the sun for one last time. Moffat plays the audience in a similar way to how Davros plays and manipulates the Doctor; seeking to trigger his sense of compassion and so spark his regeneration energy. 

Davros' characterisation and the special effects which make up his torso must be be seen as influenced by the Borg (in _New Who_ ) but as far as the actual character (going back to the Classic series) the references to [Dr Strangelove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove) \- Davros pursuing a policy of mutual assured destruction Daleks against Timelords with the universe trapped in the middle - and before him [Rotwang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotwang) from Fritz Lang's Metropolis) are unmistakable. New Whovians probably don't know that [Skaro was once home to the Kaleds and Thals.](http://www.thedoctorwhosite.co.uk/dalek/skaro/) Or that the Dalek race was born following a nuclear war, when the mutated Kaleds had their casing carapace created by their chief scientist Davros. Mutually assured destruction. As MAD as it sounds.

Of the prophecy which may or may not have been the trigger leading to the Doctor fleeing Gallifrey - well, fans of _Doctor Who_ who came in before _New Who_ know that when the Doctor first stole a TARDIS and ran away - with his grand-daughter Susan - he was played by Wiliam Hartnell.

  


I find it hard to swallow that an experienced time lord would believe himself to be the hybrid-creator (two great warrior races forced together) or even that the Time Lords saw themselves as a warrior race. But children's literature and entertainment is now chock-full of prophecy, and Steven Moffat is perfectly in keeping with the zeitgeist on this one.

Steven Moffat can write fantastically well. He can also write less well. He delights in word play: _trigger-happy mini-tanks, every miner needs a canary_ \- and self-referential nods back to _Classic_ and _New Who_ , as well as to wider popular culture. But, regrettably, he isn't always consistent. Thus, there's no guarantee we will ever see that confession dial (now slipped into Twelve's trouser pocket) again, nor that we'll hear more about the prophecy mentioned by Davros. Moffat likes to play clever. He tends to write the Doctor's tongue as stuck firmly in his own cheek, which can grate. Raybans being a little more sonic? I know the Doctor is cool (probably every Doctor bar [Six](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sixth_Doctor) and [Seven](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Seventh_Doctor) were cool) and that his future is so bright, he has to wear shades but it smacked a little too strongly of product placement for me - for all that Steven Moffat is nodding to Google glass with his line about wearable tech. Then again, something about that final scene, the doctor triggering the frame on his sunglasses, made me think of _Ferris Bueller_. If these past five decades worth of adventures (minus the universes' longest hiatus) are the equivalent of a Time Lord's day off, I'm probably OK with that. Possibly...

As mentioned, I enjoyed _The Witch's Familiar_ far more on subsequent review and found it a far stronger episode the second time I watched it. At a later date I shall have to watch this and the season opener back to back to see if they work as a two-parter, but that's a question we'll be asking ourselves often this season. 

The acting was a thing of beauty and the Doctor's reconnection and rescue of Clara Oswald a delight to see. This, and the previous two episodes, i.e. the first one this series and the Christmas special, have been all about the Doctor re-connecting with Clara, which sets up the fact that he's going to rip them apart by the end of this series quite nicely.

Watch this time & space.

_Images gakked from everywhere. Copyright mainly BBC  
_


End file.
